The Watch - ‘The Watch’ Mailbag: Late Night After Trump, the Ongoing Streaming Services Battle, and What Makes a Successful TV Show

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Chris and Andy open up the mailbag to talk about what late-night TV and TV in general will look like now that Trump is gone (3:13), the ever-growing streaming landscape (24:59), what successful TV shows look like in 2021 (33:42), and the movie ‘Promising Young Woman’ (43:43). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, the former youth poet laureate. It's Andy Greenwald. That's very tenen-boundsy, isn't it? You came in second for this one, man.

You just came in short. It's a shame, but I appreciate you getting my name out there. Andy, today we're going to be talking about a lot of stuff. We solicited some questions from listeners. and are going to mix it in to our usual conversation about television and pop culture. We'll be discussing the new film from Emerald Fennell, who you might know from The Crown and from Killing Eve. She directed a movie called Promising a Woman. We're also going to talk a little bit about some of the inauguration TV that was on yesterday

and answer a bunch of listener questions. I'm sure we'll be talking a little bit about Wanda Vision and MCO edition. So let's get into the show. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimphaya, gusalcomab, taken by injection,

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doctor about Trimphia. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interests that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. What's up, brother? Happy day. Happy America, everybody. Yeah, so did you spend a lot of time yesterday watching the inauguration? I did, and not just the inauguration, but I spent a lot of day watching just the New York Times live feed of whatever else was happening in Washington.

So, like, I watched the Biden's new head of Secret Service stand in front of an SUV for a while, getting instructions on his ear fob, you know? Really? Like, I watched Kamala and Doug climb stairs. You know, people who listen to this podcast know that I have a very specific way of watching programs that we cover. But what they might not know is that I have a very, very, very. intense relationship with television and media when news is good.

And like, for example, if a Philadelphia sports team is doing well, just bathe me in the takes. Like, I will read everything about... In the takes, but not the tape. Well, in the old days, I would have time to watch the game. But now I will spend all the free time that I have in between doing things because I don't have any free time, just reading about Joelle Embed's 40-point game. Sure. Similarly, all the stuff that I'm like, are you kidding?

kidding why would I ever watch Rachel Maddow and High Dudgeon about something that's going to keep me up all night? When she's, she enjoy read or just joking around and smiling? You know what I mean? Talking about the, the new chair of the SEC or whatever? Yeah. Yeah, give me that. So I had a lot of, I had a lot of screen time yesterday in, in between parenting. Daddy Daycare, yeah. So did you did, did you watch a lot of the inauguration on like your phone and on various tablets or did you ever sit down and watch like, full cable, shoot it into my veins? I was jumping around. I had a lot of laptop.

I had a lot of phone. I did have the TV on at one point. I did try to impress upon my almost four-year-old, the gravity of the day. And I said, so would you like to watch this? And she looked at me and she said, I really don't want to watch this. So, you know, maybe I didn't do a good job communicating the spirit of unity like the president did. but I did my best. What about you? I watched some of the stuff in the morning. I watched the swearing in.

We got a question from one of our listeners, Connor Rush, said similar to the discussion around watching cable news constantly during the insurrection on 1-6. Can you briefly discuss the effect of watching inauguration coverage? It was really designed to be an all-day viewing affair from the ceremony, press conferences, executive order signings. And of course, Tom Hanks hosted the event at night. And, yeah, I think I watched the swearing-in. Which they seemed, I feel like they were like, let's breeze through this because there was obviously no crowd.

But I felt like that went by quicker than I remember other ones doing, I guess, because. Did you like it better the year they invited all the other nominees up on stage before announcing the winner? Yeah. I didn't watch much of the ceremony, like the ball for whatever it was. I flipped over from Sixers Celtics or from like the Warriors game. just in time to see firework for the Katie Perry

saying fireworks. A lot of that stuff that I was watching though did seem like what I did catch of the ball seemed to be like what we would have done in 2014, 2016. In the midterms? Yeah, no, in 2016 had Hillary won.

There seemed to be like a lot of like let's just roll out the Hillary celebration, but for Biden. Yeah, like I believe it. I don't know what I was expected. It's not like there's like recent stuff that I think they should have mixed in like they should have had more Griselda. Do you think Lil Durk was just like there appeared live from Grand Park, Chicago or something? Like, and now the stars of TikTok.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's canon, which is a really weird way to say this is recorded fact that happened. And I don't know why I chose to frame it that way. That at the Javitt Center, by the way, I'm sorry, Hillary, I wish you had wanted. but that was having a celebration at the Javitt Center that may have been, in retrospect, your first and fatal mistake.

Lady Gaga and Katie Perry were there watching the returns and apparently had to hold hands with grief, which is a beautiful moment. I'm truly one of the worst nights in American history. But I didn't really engage with the evening, but I'll say this, and I wonder if there's anything to be gleaned from this. I'm curious if listeners of all,

political stripes, if we have them, feel the same way. But mostly, I just felt incredibly relieved, but also deeply kind of stabilized by normalcy. And not just by any kind of normalcy of the morning, because, you know, there were troops. And the way that the pool cameras would cut from, like, Lady Gaga's high note to a wall of impassive masked National Guardsman was almost Monty Python-esque at a certain point. but the normalcy of the kind of comedy with a T, not a D, and like pomp and circumstance and ritual that obviously has been trashed over the last four years, but small things like seeing Republican Senator Roy Blunt, whose name I mangled,

just a few, just a short time ago on this podcast, surprised he's come up this often. Just yeah, just right, right plan getting more mentions than like Phoebe Waller Bridge on this podcast is. Roy Blunt getting more mentions than the final season of Mr. Robot, if you're really being honest. So shouts to the Facebook group for indulging this incredible troll. He, you know, cracking jokes and just reminding us that there's such a low bar for performed patriotism in this country, but it matters. And there was footage after the ceremony of the Pence's making small talk with Kamala and Doug. And, you know, I can't imagine they were discussing. their impressions of promising young woman.

I think that, you know, probably... Can I be honest with you, there's no fucking way Mike Pence has seen promising young woman. I don't think that the concept of the movie, let alone the title is something that he has spent his life encouraging. You know what I mean?

I just, I think that that's not really in his wheelhouse. But regardless, the fact that they could be there chatting and be like, oh, that was surprising when it snowed briefly, you know, and then get into a car and never see each other again. Great. That's good. that's fine. So that was really, that was my main takeaway. And the second was, you joke, but Chris, I know that my conversion to being a movie guy is relatively recent. And so I don't

want to cause whiplash. But Chris, after yesterday morning, I think I'm a poetry guy now. I just think. You were, uh, I think that's what I'm about. You were like incredibly dad core yesterday. I feel like in your, your texts to me. You were like really into Jen Socky's press, press briefing. And then you were like currently driving, listening to this poet, Real Tears, RN, LMAO. And I was like, I'm watching, I'm watching. To be fair, I was not driving when I sent the text,

but I was driving on Sunset Boulevard when I was weeping. That's true. Yeah. I already mentioned this on Twitter, but some other things other people noticed, like, I really do feel like, we are part of Jen Saki's hero narrative because in order to get the position that she has as press secretary for the White House, which is such a crucial role now and, you know, restoring

normalcy and transparency and all that, you have to make a lot of good decisions along the way. And I just want to keep banging this drum that once again, her decision to completely ghost me and my multi-point email about welcoming President Barack Obama onto Talk the Thrones to discuss the political comparisons, you know, to political analogies between Westrose and the West Wing. it just shows such a level of leadership and discretion that I think speaks well. Decision making is key there. And I think she made the red decision. So that was that that was also

very moving. We had a question from James Hopkins that I wanted to bounce off of you because I think it's probably early days to be able to say this. And I do think that for as lovely as it was to welcome in a new administration and also to have a sense of you know, order. I think you know, even given the needs. for the military there to assure that sense of order.

There are still just a very fucked up world, and we're still in the middle of this pandemic. We still have a lot of wrongs that need to be righted. But I got a question here from James, where he asked, how will entertainment that has built an audience in the previous presidency cope with the change to a probably competent, quiet, dull administration?

One can only hope. Late night talk shows cable news is entertainment, shows like the good fight, the podcast universe. Will this be a time? of change in creativity or will they struggle? And more importantly, which 90s, mid-90s UK indie albums still stand up,

which is just an incredible two-parter from James Hopkins. Wow. Yeah. That's like going from cinema to poetry. But I was thinking about this because you mentioned, you know, Rachel Maddow and her now being back at a, you know, getting into the weeds on whether or not like Tony Blinken is the right call here or not, you know.

Rachel and Liz Warren were talking about like their dogs. You know, it was, it was so. chill. Right. And, you know, whether or not this sort of the world that sprung up outside of, uh, in the aftermath of Trump's election, you know, stuff like everything from the way in which Colbert kind of like positioned himself as a wet-eyed, you know, defender of democracy, Samantha B. Full Frontal was pretty much, I think is pretty much borne out of that, right? Yeah. And yeah, obviously, you know, like, I don't, I really have a comment on, like, you know, the podcasting that's come out out of the Trump administration.

I think that it'll take a long, I think the idea that there's going to be a switch flipped where people are no longer. I'm just imagining the podcasting that literally came from the Trump administration. Like Stephen Miller's, like, deep dive into classic, like, party of five episodes. Yeah, whatever. No. I guess a Stephen Miller party of five recap would be, he would rather have it be five parties of one, right? you would want to... That's right.

Okay. That's right. But I do think it's worth noting that I don't think that people will... There will not be a switch flipped in terms of their political engagement. Like, I do think that something has been sort of unlocked in society in terms of... For better and for worse, in terms of people's deep, deep engagement with the political process. And, you know, the idea that tomorrow or today, your timeline is somehow cleansed of all sort of armchair political takes, I think, is... demonstrably false.

Like just based on the little bit of Twitter I was looking at today, it seems like people are still really pissed off in Mitch McConnell. So people are still like going to make comments about like whether Chuck Schumer's doing the right thing or the wrong thing and where AOC is and what this person's doing and whether Josh Hawley should be able to write a book. And I don't think that that's going to stop anytime soon. The question of whether or not late night pivots back to like stupid pet tricks or not, like I guess that's interesting.

Here's my take on late night. I mean, the last four years have been terrible for comedy. That's my general take. I think that many, many talented, many, many smart people have done often brilliant, often necessary work to mock and satirize and highlight and to push back against a never-ending onslaught of bullshit. But it's often felt existential in a way that I think is kind of fighting against the nature of comedy itself. You know what I mean? It took people a while. Like there's an earnestness to the resistance, even if you're laughing, which I think is wholly appropriate because I think there are, you know, I think that as, are we middle-aged podcasters

I don't think our lives were threatened, but I think many people's lives have been threatened and affected negatively over the last four years. So I think that earnestness and urgency was important, but I think that it's produced some unfortunate comedy, but also just like, I don't want that, you know? I never, other people feel differently, but it never helped my blood pressure

or helped me sleep at night to see John Oliver skewer something that the Trump administration did over the last. four years. I'm so much happier to think of him going back to a place where he's not, he no longer feels the need for his show. And I don't know why I'm singling him out because he's brilliant and great. But for a lot of these shows, to become the helicopters that fly over the raging fires and dump water on them that we get in Los Angeles, as opposed to picking through nature and finding something interesting, you know, or spark there and dealing with that. It's just a, it's a very different approach to comedy. And, you know, I think like Saturday Night Live, I know its ratings were good and

people talked about it because Jim Carrey and Alec Baldwin or what are they going to do next to respond to this. But life outstripped comedy, you know, in a way. And it never felt particularly satisfying me to watch any of it. So I look forward to the shows pivoting. That said, the genuineness that a lot of the hosts have revealed over not just their politics and their hearts, but particularly because of the pandemic, literally their homes. I think that's probably here to stay. And I think that's probably here to stay, and I think that's a good thing. You know, I think Seth Myers and Jimmy Kimmel, for example, and Trevor Noah, just to name three, are doing some of the best TV work of their careers because they are fully and

wholly themselves, and partly that's because they're wearing flannel shirts and their kids keep walking in the room, but in some of their cases, you know what I mean? So I think that there's elements of the last four years that will be positive net, but, man, I'm ready for these shows to move on. Yeah, you know, the good fight is an interesting case study. that was a show that was obviously born out of the good wife and wanted to keep going along with some of the themes and especially just like the tone that the good wife had

and initially had been conceived as I think, you know, I don't know exactly if this is true, but if you watch the first season, the first season of the good fight is largely conceived as a star vehicle for Rose Leslie. And it's about her character being introduced to this new law firm and working with Christine Branski's, Diane Lockhart in this new law firm that's run by Delroy Lindo and a bunch of other attorneys.

And then as the Trump thing got, as the idea of the resistance and the idea that there would be this upper middle class revolt against Trump and that there would be legal proceedings going against Trump and that the world would be radicalized by Trump in a lot of ways, that became the marrow of the show. so much so that I, for as much as I adore it, found last season almost impossible to watch because it was essentially a drug-fueled fantasy of Diane Lockhart about bringing down Trump, about being in a cabal of lawyers who were trying to bring down Trump. And it was explicitly about that. And it was, yeah, I mean, like, honestly, like, shout out to them for trying it. But I think like you're saying with John Oliver at a certain point, it's not even that I was turning to my television or anything for an escape.

I mean, I don't think I'm escaping anything by watching normal people or watching, you know, what we do in the shadows. It's just that I don't want to think about this guy all the time, you know, and more often than not by 11.30 a.m., like, I already know what I know about him. Like, I already know what to think about this. I'm already pissed off about it. I'm already depressed about it. I'm already anxious about it. I don't want to them wait until 11 o'clock for somebody to be like, You guys see what's in the news today? Can you believe Trump? Like, that's not like, I don't need

that affirmation. And I certainly didn't need it in narrative television shows. No, we knew we knew pretty early, not just in the day, but in the term. And just wallowing in it didn't feel good, but particularly, and I think this speaks to what you're saying about what may outlast this moment, I think we saw pretty quickly what was effective in terms of resistance and not hashtag resistance. I mean, actually, you know, political, community-based resistance, like what could be done. You know, voting helps. Whether it was whether, what's that?

Voting helped. Voting helps, exactly. Registering voters, you know, doing building community organizations, doing the work. And I think that that's always the best antidote to feelings of helplessness. And watching, you know, an elaborate bespoke comedy bit really only made me feel more helpless. And it was not unlike, you know, for example, I would, during the last four years, when I talk to my father, who is now 81 years old, he likes to, like, try out negative nicknames he has

for Trump, you know, Don the Khan, as I like to call him. Cheeto man. And I'm like, on the one hand, you know, he's not extremely online. So he may think that he thought of that, which is fine. That's actually, like, not unlike Trump, who is like, I like to call him little Joe. Yeah, exactly, because he's little. And his first name is Joe. So I respect it, and we all got through this however we could get through it, but it actually made me feel worse here.

You're going to say that? Because I'm like, well, you got them this time. You know what I mean? So there was a disconnect there. And I think it speaks to the kind of existential nature of the last four years that we are still not reckoning with. And it's only been a day. There's going to be a lot more to come. That said, you know, when we did our first mournful post-election podcast over four years ago, I think that we were so, you know, I think that we were so, used to bad administrations from other points in our life that we were clinging to this kind of canard of like, well, there might be some good protest art, you know, or good music or something. But this wasn't that, you know, this wasn't normal in any, any way. And it wasn't okay in any way. And so I'm actually looking forward to seeing what can happen, not by saying that this is all going to be better, but by saying it will on some level be more normal. Yeah, I have a hard time believing we're going to go back to making it Hamilton. and Parks and Rec.

You know what I mean? Like I think that the last four plus years have permanently changed this country. But, you know, I couldn't make any guesses as to what like Biden era content's going to be. I know what it's not going to be. No malarkey. No one of the places where we will find

Biden era content in some shape or form plus content from a series of other administrations is Paramount Plus. So I just thought I would mention that, the pluse wars are raging. Joining CBS pluse and Disney pluse, or sorry, joining Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus is now Paramount Ploose,

which is taking on the library of CBS All Access. It's essentially a rebrand of CBS All Access, moving away from the eye and making it more about the mountain. CBS All Access is where, you know, is obviously where you can find all the, like, the CBS Network stuff, plus they have a ton of library. stuff and they do on that on that app you can watch champions league you can watch a bunch of other

sports um they have a bunch of news hubs paramount plus is an effort to sort of bring everything under i guess a more recognizable but less or unequally recognizable but less you know pre-determined brand you know like paramount i don't think has the same associations that people have with cbs which tends to be like your dad's favorite network or something like that paramount's going to bring in MTV and Nickelodeon and BT and Comedy Central and bring all of their online offerings under one umbrella. They'll also have a ton of library stuff. We'll have Champions League, the March Madness,

I assume the Masters, a bunch of sports NFL will be there, CBS News will be there. And they'll also obviously have the usual CBS offerings of procedural and sitcoms and Survivor and Amazing Race and stuff like that. I don't think that you subscribe to CBS All Access, but do you imagine any use for Paramount Plus in your life?

I did subscribe for season one of Picard. Oh, that's right. I desubscribed. What is the pay structure for Paramount Plus? They're doing an announcement on March 4th, so I don't think that they've announced. They say they have like 7 to 9 million subscribers to CBSLX. I think when I subscribed to it, it was pretty cheap. It was like 6 or 799 or something like that.

I can't remember. I guess it's, we are kind of in the same. Well, first of all, you know, I have a business relationship with NBC Universal, so take that with a grain of salt. Peacock is a weird name, but at least it's a name. I do think the plus wars are so strange because who is the consumer who's just like, well, I like regular Paramount, but if only it could be a little Paramount extra. I want a little more to my Paramount. You know what I mean? I don't know who that consumer is, but okay, they're clearly only, it's only pluses and maxes.

That's all we got. I think we're entering a very strange era that will take some time to sort out because everything you've just named sounds pretty good. That's a lot of good stuff. There's going to be stuff there to watch. And clearly a lot of stuff for a lot of different tastes in that it kind of sounds like old-fashioned television. Like you're going to have some highbrow stuff, some low-brow stuff, some sports, some whatever's. And there you go. I really don't know.

and I don't know who knows what the average television consumers' monthly budget looks like in 2021. You know, I just don't quite understand it. This is the big thing we've talked about before. Yeah. A lot of these come lately to the streaming wars, and frankly, it's actually almost everybody who's come in the last two years. I wouldn't just put Paramount Plus and Peacock, but, you know, HBO Max is still figuring itself out. Apple, no one quite understands what it is, and I'm not sure what they intend to be doing with it. None of them really have the game changer.

It reminds me of when I used to cover video games, and like a new console would come out, and then everyone would be like, well, is this the killer app, right? Is like Halo was for Xbox or Sonic was for Genesis? Like, what's the thing that's going to make everyone buy it? And in the old days, as the cable network started to get into original programming, you know, that was an opportunity for great creative flowering because AMC got paid no matter what it did because of carriage fees because everyone still had cable. So it could take flyers on really interesting stuff like Breaking Bad and Mad Men and put in the time and the energy to make those the killer apps. I mean, they chose really well. Obviously, those are incredible, you know, Hall of Fame shows.

but now to cut through when you're not getting new subscribers unless you get new subscribers, there's no baseline like there was for cable. I'm not really sure how you make the numbers work. There's still only like two or three must, must have to be in the conversation, let alone to entertain yourself and your family. And the rest are all pretty good. And I don't know how sustainable that model is for the industry. Yeah.

So I do agree with you. I think at some point, if you do cable, you probably realistic, only subscribing like two of these things. And I think for our listeners, I would imagine a lot of them are saying Netflix and Disney. They may have Amazon Prime, so they may get the Amazon stuff. But at a certain point,

you're really, really talking about $300 to $400 a month in television fees. It could be if you have all these, if you have cable plus all these services. Yeah, if you have a cable internet and phone with like some sports channels or some premium channels on your cable, then you do HBO,

max, I guess you can do that with your HBO subscription, but let's just say you have Netflix, HBO Max, Disney, a Hulu subscription and Amazon. I mean, we're talking about a lot of money in a really tough time. So I don't know what

CBS, I don't know what their value proposition is here, especially if a lot of the stuff that you would normally go to CBS for, like Survivor, let's say, you could just DVR or watch live on CBS. The other thing is, and I'm sure smarter people and more insightful people in the business side have weighed in on this. But it seems like

they're profoundly different businesses. I know we're calling all of this TV. But the metric for success for the tech companies that also are content providers like Netflix is subscriber growth to prove to shareholders that you're growing and you're growing and you're still valued at a certain at a certain level. So you need to always have new things. You need to continue to beat expectations with new subscribers checking out new things. The CBS model that is sort of transporting over to Paramount Plus, and obviously they're firing up originals, they've got all those Star Trek shows

that they've been pouring into CBS All Access. You mentioned the good fight. It's not like they're not trying. I don't mean to say that they're not doing that, but it does sound like the kind of, here's some stuff we got, seems more aimed at a steady base as opposed to showing growth.

And obviously, they're different, you know, the financials of those companies are very different. their needs are different. I'm not a quant. I also still don't know what that word means, but I like saying it to you. But it's very odd, right?

And it's just fundamentally, like, there's this odd moment right now where we're talking about, like, AMC is a plus too, right? Like AMC Plus to get extra BBC America content and Gangs of London early. I think that's where the, you can watch the Bureau on AX Plus. Gangs of London. Yeah, right.

recommended to us a lot. They are ostensibly setting foot in the same marketplace or entering the same dance hall looking to find a partner as fucking Disney with every cartoon ever made. And the same consumer is like, well, where should I put my $6.99? I mean, it's not sustainable, right? That's just a bizarre thing. Listen, I love the marketplace of ideas, but this seems so wildly imbalanced that it's curious. You would know more than I would about the nature of mergers and acquisitions among these places, but do you think that in some of these situations, let's take specifically AMC Plus, or I would even go as far as say Paramount Plus. I don't know if Paramount itself is for sale, but at a certain point, we'll have to have some moment of consolidation. Were they to go,

we're Amazon or Netflix, say, to go to AMC Plus and say, we're buying, we would like to buy your service, your library, your current original? offerings, like the development deals you have with whoever, would that be advantageous to Netflix to do? And is it as simple as saying, we've bought this? Now we have Madman and Walking Dead in our library? Or would those deals then need to be renegotiated with the original production companies that made them? It's a great question. It depends when the shows are from. The idea of perpetual ownership or partial studio ownership is really only become an issue in the last 10 years or less.

Mad Men is a Lionsgate show. Lionsgate's free to sell it wherever. Breaking Bad is Sony, which is why the Breaking Bad movie ended up on Netflix first. They can sell it however they want. Walking Dead is owned by AMC. It's probably their most valuable card. This idea of who owns the show in perpetuity has become,

it's bitten everybody. I saw in the news again a story that listeners might know about, but Netflix's first show and biggest, not first show, that was the great Lily Hammer. But their first success, Splashiest show, was House of Cards, which was an MRC show, meaning that Netflix didn't secure global ownership of it and had to renegotiate to make it make sure it wasn't going to come off of Netflix globally at a very advantageous price point, I imagine, for MRC and not so much for Netflix. Now, as everyone's just, all these studios are basically just selling to themselves and to their own corporate parent to put a show, like for Sony or for Universal or something. and to walk into a Netflix or an Amazon

and say, would you like to have the show, to put the show on your air, the starting point of the conversation is, we're taking this much of it. We are buying it. We're buying it, you know, from you. So all that is basically avoiding your question, which is, I don't know the value.

I think that my sense is that Netflix has built its brand to avoid conversations like this. They've intentionally ramped up production in almost every possible area, of television to be flush at like almost every position. Yeah. You know, they don't, it's not like a team that has only drafted pitchers for six years, and then they don't, they have to get some sluggers and free agency.

They pretty much got all of it, you know. I think that the value of AMC stuff is Walking Dead. That would be very valuable to have on Netflix, for sure. But I don't feel like they're in a position where they need to buy it. But AMC, I feel like has kind of been on sale for a while. I think they've been, I don't know if they've been coy about that. Right. I mean, you're right.

Netflix says the Witcher, which I think they were hoping, would be a huge Game of Thrones-esque success for them. And they have Stranger Things, which is a phenomenon, but is probably in its late innings, I would imagine. They don't really need, I guess, a world-breaking show because they've broken the world. I mean, when you look at Netflix's front page, you're essentially looking at 25 channels worth of different content from everything from

like Lifetime Bravo style stuff to HGTV, home improvement stuff, to sitcoms, to prestige dramas, to international dramas, to soapy, you know, romance and coming of age stuff. Like, it's pretty much got it all. And now whether or not it's all of quality is really in the eye of the beholder. But I find myself often like going to Netflix to look at what they have almost as the same way I would look at a channel guide on my cable box. Yeah, and I think, you know, I'm pulling this up now. Netflix announced just two days ago its newest subscribers, and its growth, and this ties into our conversation about LuPen and stuff the other week,

its growth is global. That's where its main growth is. Now, maybe it's the pandemic, maybe it's, you know, people need more episodes of nailed it. The North American growth has been robust. I think it's exceeded what they themselves expected yet again. I think I'm trying to find the exact number here. I wouldn't be surprised if that's down to Bridgeton. You think Bridgeton?

You think Shonda drove it? I think it helped. In the fourth quarter, they added 8.5 million subscribers. I think the majority of those were in other parts of the world, but their global total of subscribers now is rounding up. It's 204 million. And to give you guys a sense of perspective, CBS All Access is at like 8 or 9 million? Yeah, and I think Disney is claiming to be close to 100, right?

Yeah, I believe them. I mean, yeah, I don't think they have any reason to doubt it. So I don't see where things, I'm not entirely sure where things shake out, you know, I think, which isn't to say that the Paramount world, the universal NBC world, they should exist. Like, they are strong companies with ecosystems and shows and libraries, but they are entering late into a completely different marketplace. not like, it's nothing like has happened to television before because it's an existential shift. It's not like when NBC existed. And then in the 70s and 80s and 90s, they launched USA and Bravo from the same company to get in on that. It's not the same thing at all. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere

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you can book everything you need for your next adventure. Don't just dream about that next trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com and book your next trip today. You know, I was going to save this question for a little bit later, but comes from one of our listeners, Andrew, who asks, if you look at the greatest television successes over the last few years, what would you describe as the main common elements. And this conversation that we're having is really interesting because I don't know how to really answer that question

in this new landscape. Because I think success means different things for different streamers. Some of them want, they want you to never leave. Like Netflix, I think, wants you to have Netflix on as much and for as long as possible

every single day. They want you to be your singular destination for stuff. HBO Max, I don't know what they would have said seven months ago or 10 months ago, but now I think they're going to definitely position themselves as the home of movies this year. I think that HBO Max will be one of the prime delivery services for any kind of new cinematic content. And you're already seen tons of advertising on football games and during football games and stuff for the little things. And, you know, Godzilla versus King Kong is coming in March.

like they're going to be competing with Netflix in terms of that Friday night new movie audience. If I had to say though, I mean, we used to talk about this idea of a show uniting some kind of monoculture and pushing some sort of conversation. And I still think that that matters if I'm answering Andrew's question.

I mean, to me, the thing that I've seen that really seems to mark a successful show is giving viewers some sort of extra textual relationship to the work so that there is like, you can have your relationship to the show, and then there's everything around the show that makes it last longer than just the hour it's on

or the 30 minutes that it's on. And I think we've seen that with Game of Thrones especially, but also with the Mandalorian and a show that we don't really talk about the expanse. And I think you're seeing it crop up a little bit with Wanda Vision already, with just people taking something that is truly weird and amusing like Wanda Vision

and already being like, that is a sword and sord and same. that is Tony Stark's helicopter and like just starting to manufacture like, okay, we're in phase four. We're doing, we're doing this new Marvel world building thing and we are participating and building that world. For you, do you see anything that's common among the TV successes over the last few years? I think it's a very difficult question because I think you nailed it right away. What does success? What does success mean? You know, there are shows. In the now, we're talking about what's successful for the networks of the streamers rather than the shows,

because I think we have less of an understanding of what makes a successful show. And also, like, who's watching them? You know, you can keep telling me Queens Gambits number one, you can say 65 million people started it. I don't really know what that means. Also, are we rooting for creative success or are we rooting for box office? And I'm using the movie term. But, you know, for example, Cobra Kai, which I watched the first one of when it was on YouTube, YouTube, and I think it's fun and cute, maybe it's really good. I've not caught up with it. But

it was kind of an interesting oddity as an original show on YouTube. It goes onto Netflix, and it's a sensation. Now, what does that mean? It's a success. I don't know actually how many people are watching it. I don't know how committed they are to it. And I don't know if we're cheering for it because Netflix just did a spit and polished job and they profit from it. And it's similar in terms of perspective, the point of view of the conversation, like our first friend the great writer, Megan Abbott, created a show for USA last year called Darmy, based on one of her novels. It aired on USA. It existed. People liked it that saw it. It didn't set the world on fire. No one would have said this is a huge success. But Netflix had bought it

for the world and also bought it domestically after a year after premiered. It's on Netflix for two days and it's in their top 10. The show was a success because she made a good show. Can I ask you a question that you probably can't answer, which is do you think more people People saw it on Netflix in those first two days than saw it on USA. There's no question. There's no question. And it's not just whether they saw it. It was available to them.

You know what I mean? And, you know, I mean, I'm sorry, I have to do it. Like, anecdotally, my show is on in the UK now, which is wonderful. It's on the Alibi Channel. And they're promoting the hell out of it, but they also put it all up to stream. And purely anecdotally, people are enjoying it and watching it and responding to it in a completely different way than they did when it was on ad-supported basic cable week-to-week because if people like it, they're going to keep watching it, and then they're engaged and

they're excited and they're talking about it and they're telling other people about it. That's just the way the world works now, I guess. But the other thing I want to say about what success means in this day and age, we didn't use to talk about TV this way because for many years there was just TV. But if you look at now it's everything. And so think about it the way we think about movies maybe. usually don't go this direction, but maybe we should. Like, what was the most successful movie of 2017? Well, there's a segment of the population that we'll say, and I don't think they're

wrong, that it was Moonlight, which was, you know, a kind of little indie that could that did very well at the box office and shocked the world by winning Best Picture and is pointed to as a launching pad. Shocked Ernst & Young as well. Yes, it did. Yes, it did. A huge success all around, and an artistic one as well. But actually, the biggest success by another metric, of 2017 is the live-action movie Beauty and the Beast by Disney, which made $1.26 billion worldwide. So, okay, which one is more successful? And I feel like we're having those kind of conversations, and we're all, it's interesting. We, you know, we're going through a number of reader industry-based questions, but it's kind of the same thing again and again. And the answer keeps being, we're not

really sure yet. Because 10 years ago, Mad Men maybe got a million viewers an episode in its first airing, but was considered a huge success because of who those million people were and what it meant for the ratings benchmarks that existed at AMC. And you could say, well, it's only a million people, but look who's advertising on it. And it was like Heineken and Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

So they were like, ah, rich people with money watch this show. Thus, it's a success. But I imagine rich people who drink Heineken are also watching Pretended to City, the Fran Leibowitz show on Netflix, but they probably don't even notice that they subscribe. subscribe to Netflix and it will never cancel it. So why should Netflix service them beyond throwing them

in, you know, a witty urbane sob every now? That's a crucial thing though, man, because like, I don't know, like you and I've talked about this before, but when we used to work in the music journalism industry and at different publications, there would often be questions about who's our reader. And who's our reader both in like a, we didn't actually know, philosophical existential, like, why are we doing this or who are we trying to service this person? If they, if, if this person's cool enough to know this, don't they already know who this band is? And why would we be acting like we're revealing something to them by telling them who Neutral Moak Hotel is? Or, like, are we actually doing a great service to them by, like, introducing them to new bands or whatever?

I think that there's a similar conversation that we have to have about TV shows, but you're absolutely right. Mad Men would have been, you know, the smallest fish in the pond of CBS if it had been on CBS. But the fact that it was on AMC, the fact that it was part of this kind of of tapestry of shows that AMC had that seemed to be kind of changing the way we thought about television. And the fact that seemingly every single person who watched Madman blogged about it created this atmosphere of importance around the show, as did its awards run and as did just frankly, like, you know, the quality of the show. I don't know how that works now. You know what I mean? I don't know how if you're Netflix and you're like, it doesn't really matter if we are,

they're obviously not doing the HBO model where they're making shows for a certain Sunday night like discerning viewer. You know, they're making it, they're making TV for everybody. So I don't know what kind of conversations go into the things that they choose to make. I'll say that, you know, it's good that there are things being made all over and good things end up on Netflix and good things end up on all these services, which is fantastic. But the lessons of Mad Men just might not be applicable anymore. And one of them is, you know, you had the best writing the best writing staff on television, you had people who weren't stars yet,

but grew into stars, and you had the time to develop all of it. And that is what has made the show valuable. It's a same thing to have it with drones, too. But continues to make it valuable now, because now it's a complete vision, that it can be understood and sold. Like, well, this is the kind of thing

that even if it's not what you are expecting in episode one, you are going to fall in love with it. We have the track record for it, and we have the proof. Netflix isn't in that business. Netflix is basically like, give me your one, two, or three season arc for this thing, and boom, let's get out of here, and we'll move on to your next thing.

Succession, I know sometimes we point to, look, we love it, but we also sometimes point to it as the kind of show the industry wants to succeed, and thus it was inevitably going to become an Emmy darling, regardless of whether it deserved it or not. By the way, it deserves it. But the model for it, which is brilliant, brilliant writer, who himself is not famous yet in Jesse Armstrong, and a cast that also, I mean, people know who Kieran Culkin is or whatever, but like they didn't top line it. You know what I mean?

The cast is so amazing because, yeah, maybe some of us have noticed Jay Smith Cameron on rectify or whatever, but she's Jerry forever now. And people fucking love it. And they should, you know? That model of bottom up development is, I think is imperiled and affects the shows we watch

and the decisions that are made. I wanted to ask you about promising a woman because I know you watched it the other night, but beyond what you thought of the movie, I also thought you said something very interesting about the process of watching it. So first of all, what was your take on the film itself? So for people who don't know,

maybe people have been reading about it, Promising Young Woman is available. It should have been in theaters. Maybe it is in theaters some places, but it is one of those, like, in theaters now, 20-buck rentals available on where you, the services that you use for that,

so Apple or Amazon. Highly recommend that you do it. It was written and directed by Emerald Fennell, who herself is an actress, but also was the showrunner of the second season of Killing Eve. It has an amazing cast, toplined by a career best performance by Carrie Mulligan, who is always at her career best, I think, one of our greater actors and just amazing in everything she does. It sounds like she's going to, she's sort of coming, pulling ahead in the best actress race to the extent that there is one.

Which I can't wait to weigh in on once I see another movie. this year that came out this year. I'm very excited. But I guess the log line is it is a sometimes funny, mostly unsettling story of a woman who basically has subsumed her life in the pursuit of revenge for a friend who was assaulted and not believed. And thus spends her time not finishing medical school as she intended to, but kind of entrapping, pretending to be drunk at bars and entrapping awful dudes who would seek to take advantage of her. And then kind of the past becomes the present and other things happen. I won't spoil it. It's a really worthwhile movie. It's a tough watch at times, but it's an extremely of the moment film. And I really admired

it. And I just would say to get the cast. Like sometimes you can just, maybe it's the script, Maybe it's the charisma of Emerald Fennell, who I don't know. But she just, like, you just go down the line in this movie. Like, like the duchiest guys are played by Adam Brody, great comedian, Sam Richardson, Max Greenfield from New Girl. Christopher Lowell, you might know from Glow or Veronica Mars, like great actors like that. And then just making these really smart, subtle choices. Like, Carrie Mulligan's parents are played by Jennifer Coolidge, who you know from Best in Show in those movies. And Clancy Brown.

the way, the movement starts here. Cast Clancy Brown as a nice guy, you cowards. That dude is always an asshole. Yeah, she gets killed. Turns out, Stars and troopers, yeah. Super sensitive, lovely performance. One of the best in the movie.

Anyway, I really recommend it. What I don't recommend is being my best friend and having to get texts from me while I watch movies like Chris has to. Because he called me on this and I really appreciate it, So you wanted to talk about this, right? Which is, I was, I really struggled with the first 20 minutes of the movie to the point where I was considering bailing.

What was the other thing that you did that with recently? The boys. The boys. Yeah, which is really irresponsible as a watcher and consumer of content. It's disrespectful to the filmmakers. But it's something that I've noticed. And I think in the case of promising young woman, it may have been tonally jarring. and nobody needs a 43-year-old dude to be like,

was this accurate? Did dudes act like this in bars? Yeah, I think they probably do. I am not the person who's going to weigh in on this, and it's a horrific nightmare show, but I think pretty accurate from what I understand from people who I talk to who are not 43-year-old dudes.

But I don't know if anyone else shares this. So we're putting it out here, and I'd like you to diagnose me, doctor. Yeah, no, we wanted to do a little bit of watching pathology. like stuff that we find that's creeping up in our behaviors while we're watching stuff. And mine is when a tone is being placed on me. Dictate it.

I fight like I'm being handcuffed. I fight it. I do not subsume easily to someone else's aesthetic point of view unless I already know and trust them. And by that I mean, I know the style of movie it is. It's a noir. It's a heist. It's a thriller. It's a comedy. I'm ready for the road ahead. Or it's a filmmaker who I've already fallen in love with or who I already understand. You know what I mean? And so I walked in,

I submitted to this movie and I chafed against it unfairly. And now I think if I watched it again, I would be like, okay, now I understand it. Is there a specific example of something in the beginning of promising young women that happened where you were like, I don't, this isn't on my frequency? It was broad. You know, the needle drops. It starts with Charlie XX, whom everyone knows I love. but the candy-colored visuals, the over-the-topness of the duchiness of the dudes, then it kind of settles into a very different rhythm, and it misdirects a number of times after that. I won't spoil it.

The misdirection and the tonal intensity is the movie. That's her style, and it should be commended. But why am I so impatient and untrusting of others? Is it because I'm home? Would it be different if I was in a theater? And couldn't get up? I don't remember you. I mean, I don't remember you go to the movies,

but I don't remember you ever being like, I was at a movie theater and I almost walked out after 20 minutes. Like, I've only walked out of like one or two movies. Not even the time we went to see Prometheus at the Arklight with Sean after a Granlan party and I was super hungover and we were in second row. That was because you were mostly full of gin at that moment. That's right. Okay, that's fair.

I thought this was like a fascinating thing. You know, we've gotten some questions from the Facebook group about some of our habits with watching stuff. You know, um, Harry asked how long do you give us? show to warm up to it. And he's, you know, does a pilot eat to grab you or are you willing to give it a whole season? I was thinking about some of my own pathologies, which is much more behavioral than, um, psychological. Like, I think what you're describing is like an almost, like, an uncomfort with having, being told what a story is. Yes. Mine, I think I've really realized

now. And it's, I think in some ways you could describe it to ADD. Like, I definitely feel like the last couple of months have shattered my, uh, like just basically shred my brain. So I was thinking a lot about how much I was second screen, like on my phone during Mandalorian, during initial viewings of Mandalorian, just because that was specifically happening in, you know, October and November. And I was, you know, there actually was a reason to read your phone every minute because something was kind of happening. And I started starting thinking about like, you know, Mandalorans obviously a show I love, but I often would look at my phone while it was on.

And one of the reasons for that is because there's a lot of stuff in Mandalorian that is just like people traveling across a landscape. Or walking down a hallway. Yeah, it didn't really have any like actual. If you're a Star Wars fan or if you were a fan of Manhattan Beach, like it's cool to see that. But as like in terms of like getting through story, it didn't necessarily have like a ton to tell you.

Every once in a while he would get jumped by like some jowals or whatever. But like for the most part, it would be like they're riding a speeder slowly across the landscape. It's awesome. On the 15th one, I don't know if I need to watch every single frame of it. And I think if I had one thing that I buck against with films and television, I think everything is too slow and too quiet. Won't surprise you, given if you can feel how I talk or if you know me, that one of the reasons why I adored industry is I feel like I agree with Mickey Down and Conner K. It's like, too much TV is too boring. There's just not enough talking. People talk to slow. I can handle multiple conversations happening at once. And even the shows that I adore,

I think are often incredibly solemn about the, like, sanctity of this person talking to this person with no other distractions. No wonder you didn't like Roy Blunt at the podium yesterday. It was way too handholdy for you as he explained the solemn tradition of the inauguration to you. That's true. You wanted more. You wanted everything at once. right? You wanted like a you wanted a splinter unit filming Josh Hawley playing dress up in his yard in Missouri or something, right? Like you wanted all of it at once. So the other thing that I think has been happening for me more recently is because of the amount of stuff that we can watch, I find it more and more difficult to go back to stuff that we might have missed. So the rare

exceptions of say like Peaky Blinders or Yellowstone, which are two shows that I caught up with that I was not up on when they were first dropping. And that is a project, man. Like, there's something weird about knowing that you have, some people might really enjoy the idea of, like, I have 30 hours of Yellowstone to catch up on before the new season starts. Who are those people? Well, my point is, I think it's a lot easier to say, I'm, you know, the new season of

Yellowstone is beginning. I'm looking forward to watching it. I have watched all of the rest of it. You know, it's, for me, I find it very difficult to, um, even for shows like Patriot or things like, I know that I would like, like, you know that I would like, like if I just like had the time or gave it the time. Now I have the time. I actually do. Like I watch a lot of bad shit, but there is something like once I miss a certain window, whether it's like, not even early adoption, but it's just like being a part of something and its first run,

I find it hard to catch up with stuff that's like two or three seasons in. Yes. And I think that's had to be priced in to like the overall sticker cost of entertainment. And I think that's also, And that trickles down. You know, networks, not necessarily streaming services here, but the remaining networks, one of the reasons they prefer certain departments in them anyway, anthology shows or limited series, is because you have the budget every time is that of a new show. You have another chance to make the sale, to get someone on board. The marketing budgets for fifth season returning shows are considerably less because they know,

they're going to be fewer viewers. They're just going to be because of attrition, right? And then you're not going to have someone starting with the fifth season. And if they catch up, maybe they're catching up on a different service, et cetera, et cetera. So that factors in, I think, into the streaming world. Like, Netflix would love for you to fall in love with Breaking Bad and watch all six seasons of it. But because then you're watching it on Netflix. But I imagine that their algorithm suggests that,

showing, dangling something that's only two or three seasons in front of someone is a, it's a lot more appealing because then they'll have another, having six three season shows is more valuable to them than having two nine season shows. That's a really good point. We can wrap it up there. Do you think your ADD is going to lessen now that Sleepy Joe's in charge? Well, I mean, I'm trying to distinguish between ADD, which I probably do have, but is undiagnosed, and just being anxious about the state of the world.

And allowing those kind of like, that's usually the time. Like, I would go to television to sort of watch basketball or watch something that I enjoy and escape from the real world, but unable to not look at my phone when I have downtime, you know, not able to like turn away from it. I hope so. I hope I'm less sort of scatterbrained about stuff like that. What about you?

I think in terms of my own problem, I think I need to be more thoughtful and respectful about the viewing experience, particularly if it's a movie. You can commit and submit to someone else's point of view for two hours. And I think that I've struggled with that. I know I'd rarely go to the theater, but like there are movies that I very much wanted to see that I wouldn't see at home and waited to see it in the theater. theater or went out of my way to see in the theater because I just wanted to be focused on it, you know, and I think that the way that trickles down to television is I definitely have violent reactions to that kind of submission and shows whose tone I struggle with, but then I jump ship, right?

You jump ship early, and does it come around? Maybe, but you kind of only have that first chance to make that, to make that first impression. But it's interesting. And I think that it's something that I ought to be more mindful. I mean, we want, you know, especially as when I was a functioning critic, you want the strong reactions. Nobody wants the medium take. But I'm glad you brought this up because I am a little bit ashamed and worried at the version of how close I came to bailing on something that I think was really worthwhile.

Well, we're here to hold each other accountable. That's how I felt about when I tried to leave this podcast in early 2013. Can I just clear something up? People think that I was being serious about us ending the watch. I know. No. We're not. We're never going to end this podcast. Are you kidding? We just get to talk about stuff. Guys, we just did an hour without talking about a single show. Why would we stop doing this? This is great. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on Monday. We'll do Wanda Vision. Have a great weekend for instance.

Bye, guys.